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1881? Charles H. Spieler, Philadelphia. Saunders #102. Courtesy Ohio
Wesleyan University, Bayley Collection. Whitman wrote
on a package containing this and the previous photo, "some good
ones (may-be the best I have of all or any)." Whitman described
the
photo as "Spieler's 3/4 face, open neck, the 'Lear'," and the
name "Lear photo" has persisted (Whitman's friend Mary Costelloe
gave it that name, and Whitman and his friends approved).
Whitman's
dress here echoes his "nightshirt" dress in the Gardner
portraits nearly twenty years earlier. In 1888 Samuel Hollyer,
who over thirty years earlier had made the famous 1854
engraving of the daguerreotype that served as the frontispiece
for the 1855 Leaves, made an engraving of this photo,
but Whitman
was not pleased with it, finding the eyes too glaring: "I have
a dull not a glaring eye."
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